'Avengers: Infinity War' Official Trailer Analysis

Well, well, well... We finally have that long awaited Avengers: Infinity War trailer, so I figured it might be fun to do a breakdown of the trailer with my own thoughts as to what's going down. I'm currently home sick with Strep Throat after taking my final exam of the semester earlier today, so I figured I may as well take a crack at it. I currently haven't decided if I'm going to make this a regular thing on my blog or simply reserve it for bigger blockbusters yet, but the latter is most likely. Anyways, this will be very similar to my 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Trailer Analysis where I will go through the trailer frame by frame, detailing my commentary along the way.  

**Keep in mind that these are just my theories and interpretation of the scenery. I could be way off mark in regards to speculation, but provided I'm correct, potential spoilers lie ahead.**

'Avengers: Infinity War' Official Trailer Analysis

The trailer opens with a shot of a planet... Now, before I go any further, I want to take a stab at guessing what the planet may be. I'm presuming it's not Earth based on the orange hue, but the state of Earth's appearance is completely in the air after Thanos and his armies have come through...

What I believe to be the more probable outcome is that it's Xandar, the capital of the Nova Empire and the location of the Nova Core's Headquarters. Xandar is the planet seen in the first Guardians of the Galaxy, and as you can see above, the light reflects off Xandar with a brighter, orangish hue similar to the mysterious planet. Another reason that I believe the planet is Xandar is because it makes a lot of sense that Thanos would be headed to Xandar to retrieve the Power Stone that was left under the protection of the Nova Core at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, and we know he gets his hands on that stone based on later evidence. 

Next, we have a very distraught-looking Tony Stark as there's voice-over from Nick Fury reciting the beginning of his Avengers Initiative speech from The Avengers, saying "There was an idea..." before a slow piano rendition of Alan Silvestri's Avengers Theme creeps in. On that note, I LOVED the use of Silvestri's theme in this trailer because it gave my chills due to its combination of eeriness and epicness. Tony seems to be holding onto someone's hand, so presumably he's very torn up over someone's death or severe injury. My best guess would be that that's Spider-Man in his new Iron Spider suit due to the glove. Another possibility is that he's simply overwhelmed by the fact his premonitions are becoming a reality, as we've seen his PTSD in Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

The speech is then carried on by different members of the team quoting lines from the speech. Stark chips in first, saying "to bring together a group of remarkable people" as an un-Hulked Bruce Banner lies in what appears to be the ruins of the Sanctum Sanctorum while Doctor Strange and Wong gaze upon him. 

One interesting thing to note is how this called to mind a similar moment from The Avengers where Bruce was chatting with a security guard played by Harry Dean Stanton after falling from a Helicarrier. 

The moment also appears to be homaging a story-beat from the Infinity Gauntlet comic where Silver Surfer falls into the Sanctum to warn Strange about Thanos and his intentions to assemble the Infinity Gauntlet. I suspect Banner will be serving a similar purpose considering we last saw him onboard a ship with Asgardians at the end of Thor: Ragnarok as Thanos' ship loomed overhead in one of the post credit scenes.

The baton is then passed to Vision, who says "to see if we could become something more..." as we see him and Wanda in some room together. The most interesting thing to take away from this, aside from seeing a progression of their burgeoning romance, is that Vision appears very humanlike. My best guess is that he is projecting this appearance to go incognito or perhaps to appeal to Wanda (Scarlet Witch) or she is using her powers to project the appearance. Another possibility is that this is what happens to him once the Mind Gem is removed from his forehead (as the trailer later prominently displays) because there's a glow coming from that spot on his head.

Then we see Thor, who recites a portion of the next phrase "so when they needed us, we could fight the battles..." He's clearly inside some spaceship, and my best guess is that it's the Guardians of the Galaxy's Milano based on the trailers conclusion. It's also possible that this is that ship that all the Asgardians escaped on, but I find that far less likely, because I presume we're going to see that one blown to smithereens in the opening.

Natasha (Black Widow) then concludes the statement with "that they never could" as we see what I'm presuming is her and Banner's first reunion since Age of Ultron. Banner curiously seems to be toying with the arm of the Hulkbuster suit, and we get a glimpse of the updated armor later on. Oh, and Natasha has blonde hair now. I'm guessing this is because she went incognito along with all of Team Cap at the end of Captain America: Civil War, but there seems to be this odd occurrence with her hair changing between like every Marvel movie she appears in.

**The Silvestri score booms as we're treated to the more recent Marvel Studios opening logo**

The trailer transitions to an establishing shot of New York, followed by a shot inside the Sanctum Santorum. Wong and Strange appear to have phoned over Stark to come dress and pick up his science bro before they gaze up at something occurring in the New York skyline. Most curiously, you can see something glowing in Tony's hand... and it ain't an arc reactor.

Fans may remember that at the end of Captain America: Civil War, Tony Stark received a package from none other than Steve Rogers containing a flip-phone along with a message that ended by saying "If you need me, I'll be there," so I suspect Steve's gonna be getting a call very soon... We're also treated to a voice-over from the Mad Titan saying this, "In time, you will know what it's like to lose..."

We are then introduced to an exciting titillation for Spider-Man's skillset as we see the hairs on his arms prick up, confirming that this iteration of Peter Parker has definitely got Spidey-sense. Peter then looks out of the school bus to see a giant craft flying overhead that presumably belongs to Thanos. Thanks' voice-over continues with the following, "To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail all the same."

We see the four out on the street gazing at the craft above as Thanos says "Dread it..."

Which is followed by "Run from it..."Destiny still arrives." as we see someone walking over what appears to be a group of dead bodies and Loki offering the Tesseract to Thanos. I think a lot can be extrapolated from these frames as I'd guess those are the Asgardians and Loki is offering the Tesseract in exchange for his life. This confirms that he did indeed snatch the cube up at the end of Thor: Ragnarok before the destruction of Asgard as many Marvel fans suspected. You've also got to remember that he was originally tasked with retrieving the object for Thanos in The Avengers, so I'm certain Thanos isn't too pleased with the God of Mischief for his failure.

Thanos enters, and boy does he look tough walking through that portal. He probably conjured the gateway now that he securely has the Space Stone in his possession. 

We see Spidey flipping about in that sweet looking Iron Spider suit from the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming.

We then can hear T'Challa ordering Wakandans to "evacuate the city" while we watch Thor struggle.

Next we see Proxima Midnight, one of Thanos' Black Order (I'll touch on them in a moment), hurling a spear at a silhouetted man. All the while, we hear more of T'Challa's ordering Wakandans to "engage all defenses..."

So The Black Order are Thanos' children who are warriors that serve as his generals. I'm sure they will be instrumental in collecting the Infinity Stones for Thanos. They're made up of Corvus Glave, Proxima Midnight, Ebony Maw, and Black Dwarf (left-to-right on either side of Thanos).

Then came one of my favorite moments in the trailer when T'Challa says "And get this man a shield..."

Steve Rogers steps out of the shadows! AHHHH!!! Meanwhile, Wanda looks very uneasy about something, probably related to what's about to happen to Vision.

We see the upgraded Hulkbuster entering the Battle for Wakanda, which looks AMAZING!!

Natasha stabbing out at one of the Black Order... Doctor Strange with some enchantments at the ready... some crazy things falling from the sky... and then we have Steve and T'Challa putting the hurt on Thanos' minions.

Spidey gets slammed by Thanos and Tony longingly looks at something... Thanos speaks, saying "Fun isn't something one considers when balancing the universe..."

And Vision writhes on the ground in pain as his Mind Gem is pried out of his forehead.

Thanos adds the Space Stone to his Gauntlet... 

He flexes his fist w/ a partially assembled gauntlet before punching the living daylight out of Iron Man with his bare fist. He completes his monologue with "But this, *laughs* does put a smile on my face."

We see Bucky prepping his machine gun alongside Wakandan warriors.

 Black Panther stands at the helm of his army with Cap and Bucky behind them.

 THEY CHARGE FOR A FULL OUT BATTLE!!!

ANNNNDDDD WE GET THIS THING OF UTTER BEAUTY!!! Interesting things to note are that Bucky has an arm again... I'm guessing this one might be made from Vibranium considering he's been in Wakanda. Cap has these gauntlet things that I think could have a holographic shield of some sort like he has wielded in the comics or it's simply gauntlets to protect his forearms.

Pure unadulterated epicness as the title card forms.

Oh... and Thor, meet the Guardians. Guardians, meet Thor. Thor wakes up and asks "Who the hell are you guys?"

Final Thoughts:

-I suspect the film will open with Thor and the Asgardian's ship being attacked by Thanos. 

-Thor & Hulk are both ejected into space. The Guardians come across Thor and Hulk reverts back to Banner before winding up in the Sanctum Sanctorum. 

-I think the heroes will operate in different teams before finally uniting in the end.

-I think Wakanda is housing the Soul Stone, the last Infinity Stone the we've yet to see in the films. I think there's plenty of reasons for this, but the most poignant being that Thanos is attacking Wakanda. Why else would he waste his time, if not to finish assembling the gauntlet?

In summary, I LOVED this trailer. It was an OUTSTANDING start to my day, and I can't wait till May 4, 2018.

'Kingsman: The Golden Circle' Review

I was surprised to see how divisive this movie wound up being (currently standing with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score), so I'm going to have spoiler areas to discuss some specifics in more detail. There will be clear spoiler warnings to mark these as a means of forewarning those who've yet to watch Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

[This review was originally written in September 2017 and is now being published to coincide with the digital home media release. For an explanation of this, visit my Fall 2017 Important Update post.] 

Kingsman: The Golden Circle revolves around Eggsy approximately a year after the events of The Secret Service. When disaster strikes Kingsman headquarters in the form of an egomaniacal drug lord named Poppy, Eggsy and the remnants of Kingsman must align themselves with their American cousins in order to save the world once more. 

Matthew Vaughn circled back to write and direct the spy sequel, once again receiving some assistance in the screenplay department from Jane Goldman. Since The Golden Circle managed to wrangle together much of the same behind-the-camera talent from The Secret Service, I was hoping the sequel might be able to stand toe-to-toe with the fantastic first film. Unfortunately, that wasn't necessarily the case. Instead, I was quite shocked to see The Golden Circle face such a mostly-mixed critical reception. While I don't agree with the general consensus, I can certainly concede that The Golden Circle wasn't quite as great as The Secret Service.

However, I don't think a sequel succeeds simply by surpassing the original. While that is the ideal scenario, it's an uncommon occurrence. When I see an action-packed blockbuster sequel, I hope to to be entertained and I felt Kingsman: The Golden Circle flourished in that regard. I first saw the film in an early screening, as a part of my fall internship, and enjoyed it enough to then pay and see it a second time in IMAX opening weekend. Trust me when I say it doesn't happen too terribly often that I watch something more than once the same week of release. 

Any-who, on a technical level The Golden Circle is superbly shot, exceptionally edited, and the film moves at a fun, brisk pace. The one downfall is that the visual effects work in the CG-reliant action sequences aren't always up to snuff; but even at their worst, the effects are still sufficient and not too distracting. Meanwhile, Vaughn doubles down on his stylized sensibilities this time around, injecting a frenetic vitality into every second of action fueled by an upbeat soundtrack. Even though The Golden Circle's action sequences never quite measure up to the church massacre sequence from the first, the film has an exuberant opening car chase and the insanity goes full throttle from that point on with a bonkers buckaroo bar brawl, a spellbinding shootout, and an insane all-out assault to cap things off. 

One of the common complaints regarding The Golden Circle was that the sequel was too far-fetched. To those griping, I ask this "Did you not watch The Secret Service?" For me, absurdity has seemed to be the whole point of this franchise. The Secret Service kept itself in a relatively restricted reality that progressively loosened the confines of this fictional world till there no longer were any confines. At the start of The Golden Circle, the can of worms has already been opened as we'd seen the glorious church massacre and the hosts of exploding heads. It's difficult for me to imagine The Golden Circle would then regress backwards to sensible surroundings, especially when you take into account that this franchise is inspired by classic Bond, with this installment tipping its cap to Roger Moore in particular.

So yes, this film gets absurd at times and I think that's perfectly okay. I'm not expecting a movie about international spies to remain grounded from start-to-finish, especially since the franchise is based off a comic book. In the case of Kingsman, I excuse the ridiculousness because I'm invested in the characters and the action commanded my attention. In regards to the story itself, Vaughn and Goldman do a swell job tying up loose threads from the first, advancing the plot, and simultaneously laying the groundwork for promising possibilities later on down the road. Vaughn and Goldman make an interesting addition to the world of Kingsman in the form of the Statesman. The American spin on the Kingsman agency allow for plenty of laughs and are an interesting expansion on the global intelligence community, but the plot does sometimes suffer from their inclusion.

While I think Vaughn and Goldman succeeded in progressing with a fun, outlandish spy venture, The Golden Circle does sometimes suffer from feeling too formulaic at times. This is largely because the villain is another eccentric antagonist with a henchman who has a weaponized appendage and a plan involving the sale/distribution of some product that will spell doom for many. The parallels are then made abundantly clear by countless call-backs to the original. However, these references found a nice, natural niche in the narrative rather than coming across as forced. 

**Spoiler Warning**

In particular, I actually liked how Eggsy wound up in a committed relationship with Tilde, the Swedish princess from the first film. The relationship took me aback, because I didn't realize they'd be carrying forward with that plot point, but I like how it distances Eggsy from Bond. Where Bond typically moves on from his woman without a second thought, Eggsy's actually interested in forming and maintaining a romantic relationship. I found that to be a nice twist on the traditional gentleman spy archetype and was glad they incorporated it into the plot.

As for my problems, I wasn't a fan of the way Roxy quickly got one-offed and how it was just brushed over. I'm guessing this was done because Vaughn wanted to loop in the Statesman and bring back Harry, but I think they could have still made it work. It's not like many of the Statesman had much to do either, considering Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, and Halle Berry had relatively reduced roles in comparison to how the Statesman were being thrown around in the marketing for The Golden Circle. Who knows though? Roxy could turn out to have somehow miraculously survived in the next one! For the time being, I'm a bit bothered by it though...

When it comes to the return of Harry Hart, I found the explanation for his survival to be quite convenient. The Statesman just so happened to arrive right after he was shot in the face and have an "alpha gel" that was able to repair any damage. I suppose it works for the purposes of quickly explaining how he's alive, but I'm still not sure it was entirely necessary for his character to come back to begin with. I wasn't opposed to seeing him reappear per say, but I felt they could have dedicated his screen time towards some of the underutilized characters I just mentioned or at least come up with a better explanation for his return. Otherwise, I was happy enough to see him back in the mix.

I thought it was intriguing they took one of the top agents of Kingsman and subverted audience expectations by making him clumsy and unrefined after recovering from amnesia. On the subject of amnesia, I liked how it took time for Harry to recall everything as opposed to healing immediately. I think many people are wondering where the heck the whole butterfly thing came from, but the idea Harry's interested by butterflies is planted in the original. When Eggsy's visiting Harry's home, there are MANY butterflies decorating the wall so it's not like the lepidopterist subplot came out of nowhere. My one issue with his character though, was that he seemed to become a proficient agent again just before the third act without much explanation. If they hadn't devoted so much screen time to explaining his return and recovery, I probably wouldn't have been as bothered, but it just came across as sloppy, storytelling to me.

Another thing that bothered me was a subplot shoehorned into the story seemingly for the sake of ridiculing Donald Trump. It's not that I'm bothered by mockery of Trump, considering I see it on a daily basis all over social media, but I didn't feel the political agenda warranted its place in this movie. I'd understand if the entire plot had political undertones and it serviced the storyline, but that's not really the case and it just stood to bloat the film's running time. Although, I suppose Vaughn felt he had to make it up to Democratic audiences for blowing up Obama's head in the last one. 

Then there's one scene that I'm sure will be controversial where Eggsy has to seduce a girl in order for them to locate Poppy and find a cure to the Blue Rash. It's rather risqué to say the least, but stands in accordance with one of the predecessors' contentious scenes, so I wasn't really bothered by it. One thing that's probably being overlooked in favor of viewing the moment as misogynistic is how it brought about a crisis of conscience for Eggsy. He wants to remain faithful to Tilde, but at the same time he knows he needs to plant this tracker to help save the world. Sure, it was unnecessary, but it did show some maturity on Eggsy's behalf and I liked that touch. 

**End of spoilers**

Among the ensemble, Taron Egerton once again channels a suave, charming sensibility into Eggsy that enables him to stand his ground opposite established talent. Egerton imbues Eggsy with such confidence and charisma that you can't help but be drawn towards the character. Alongside Egerton, Mark Strong turns in a prime performance as Merlin. Strong manages to elicit lots of laughs thanks to commendable comedic timing and even strings out some heartfelt emotional beats I didn't see coming. Meanwhile, Colin Firth puts his all into resurrecting Harry Hart by breathing new life into the character with a surprisingly layered performance. There's not much I can say without spoiling the film, so if you're wondering what all I thought of his return; watch the film and come back to check out the spoiler section above! 

Now for the woefully underutilized Statesman... Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, and Jeff Bridges are all billed as being a big part of The Golden Circle. They're on ALL the posters and trailers relating to The Golden Circle, but sadly none of these actors are afforded much to do. They make a strong impression when onscreen, but simply don't factor into the story as much as I would have liked. Basically, don't expect to see these three actors onscreen for more than ten minutes total or you'll be woefully disappointed.

Thankfully, Pedro Pascal stands out apart from the crowd as Agent Whiskey. The Game of Thrones star does it again, putting forth a gruff, chiseled Southern charm that's simply satisfying to see. Pascal gets plenty of time in the limelight with a couple key action sequences that will knock your socks off, and his character is by-far the most developed of the Statesman agents, so it's only fitting that he lassoes his way towards standing being one of the top performers.

In the antagonistic department, neither Julianne Moore or Edward Holcroft were able to fill the void Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella left behind. Moore seems to have thoroughly enjoyed herself playing Poppy as an bozo baddie, but I don't think the script did her character any favors. Poppy's motivation aren't really relatable and she's not positioned to be particularly menacing in her own right whatsoever. Her right hand-henchman, the rejected Kingsman applicant Charlie, is portrayed by Holcroft once more, and while he makes for a serviceable servant of evil, he's rarely anything more than that. On the bright side, viewers may or may not be surprised to see Elton John pop up in The Golden Circle for an extended cameo appearance. Elton John's scenes had me dying of laughter and independently are more than worth the price of admission (or Blu-Ray in this case?).

Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there was enough fun to outweigh its problems in my opinion. Kingsman: The Golden Circle may not be a golden follow-up, but it shouldn't be discounted as fool's gold, because The Golden Circle still shines as a delightful globe-trotting spy adventure in spite of its flaws! 

Film Assessment: B