Avengers: Infinity War

[OJsDad]

Let the teasing begin!

[JasonPratt]

Pretty swass to see Stark, Parker, and Quill standing around on an alien-dirt set.

[Sir Slash]

Take my money now.  :dreamer:

[Emeraldlis]

Ooh looks good  :D

[bayonetbrant]

some interesting theories about the MCU

http://www.cbr.com/freaky-mcu-fan-theories/

Ignore the exclamation points - typical web-bulshit hyperbole.  Some of the theories aren't bad.

#1 isn't new, though.

[mirth]

#10 is most likely true and will factor into Thor: Ragnorak

[mirth]

And #7 is interesting speculation.

[Sir Slash]

I can't see Peggy Carter ever banging Stark, not even drunk, un-conscious, and suffering from amnesia. But it is possible. I'd love to see Red Skull come back and soon.

[mirth]

If Red Skull comes back, I doubt it will be Hugo Weaving playing him. My understanding is that Weaving hated the role.

[Sir Slash]

Too bad. I thought he was a natural for it. The one about Stan Lee is intriguing. His scene in Guardians 2 has an odd line that I won't give away here as well as who he's with in the scene. It lead me to think they're might be more to than just a humorous scene. Or maybe it was just a way of acknowledging his special status in the MCU while he's still with us. Maybe he's Tony Stark's real father.    Either way, I'm good with it.

[mirth]

Stan's scenes in Guardians 2 were fun. I thought it was a nice touch and a cool way to explain his presence in the various films.

[JasonPratt]

Note that the linked article will try to take over your browser to run ads. I'm on an old Mac, so I'm not too worried, but anyone else had better have their protection running hard.

#15 is pointless: we already know what international criminal/terrorist organization Stane was working for. He was one of the Ten Rings. Frankly it's past time to get back to that plotline again (since IM3 kind of tried to whiffle them away, and the maybe-canon "Hail to the King" one-shot tried to bring back a more official "Mandarin").

#14:

[Hydra] had already tried to take out Captain America in the 1950s.

-- what? When did that happen?? I watched both seasons of Agent Carter, and so far as I can tell from that and Cap2, Hydra legitimately thought Cap was dead. Granted, Hydra was involved in the Avengers Initiative (although that may have been a retcon of Powers Boothe's character on the Committee or whatever, with his character notably absent in Cap2) as oversight. At least some of the helicarrier crew were probably Hydra agents (again in hindsight), and Hydra definitely co-opted that technology for Cap2's plot. But I don't see any evidence that Hydra set up the Avengers: that was clearly Nick Fury's project, which the oversight committee was grumpily objecting to. The article itself makes it clear that if anything Hydra was trying to stop future Avengers (like with the Oversight Project). In any case, the quoted claim comes out of left-field with no justification.

#13. Yes, Loki intentionally got captured. No, this was not to bring the Avengers together by unleashing the Hulk; nor as a way of getting back to Asgard. On the contrary, he came close to smashing them apart thereby. The movie explained pretty clearly that Loki did it to (1)  keep the group distracted from Hawkeye's theft and further tech development on the gateway system; and (2) to get the group to fight one another (especially the Hulk) by means of the scepter. Why bother attacking the Earth? Jealousy against Thor is very comics canon, but more importantly Loki had discovered Thanos wanted to attack the Earth (why exactly was unclear, but now we know the Eye of Agamotto has the Time Gem, with a portal in New York) and was willing for Loki to borrow an Infinity Gem to help with that. Effectively a smash and grab burglary on a large scale. Granted, Loki's willing to take advantage of the situation back on Asgard once he gets a chance, but Thor2 makes it pretty clear I think that Loki didn't have a plan yet in the cell and was just waiting for further opportunities. Note that Loki still knew of ways to get in and out of Asgard secretly! He didn't need to be captured and taken back, and had that been his goal he could have succeeded just by letting Thor take him back once captured originally on the Helicarrier.

#12. I think I've read confirmation that the Red Skull will be back for the Infinity War (presumably the 2nd film). In any case the writers left room for future writers to bring him back. This is the first theory that makes fully coherent sense even if his return turns out to be only a rumor. But it doesn't make much sense on the scale of things for Hydra to be working for Thanos. (And if the Shield TV show means anything, they were after all a cult for bringing back a super-Inhuman whose name also happened to mean Death. I was hoping at the time this would be Thanos related, but evidently not by the time the season was over.)

#11. If Pepper died as a result of the Extremis, then (1) that would be the first known failure of the process after it succeeded in granting full powers and (2) the implication of IM3 was that they cured her offscreen. Is the death supposed to go that far back with Tony glossing this over while confessing things to his buddy Bruce in a humorous reveal at the end? Did she die of complications after the cure somehow? Why would Stark keep up a pretense with his closest friends? This theory would be admittedly interesting, since it would explain why (as per HISHE's humor video) Pepper wasn't immediately invited onto the Avengers herself! -- she seemed pretty jazzed to have survived to pick up some very solid superpowers. But it doesn't seem feasible, especially if Pepper is still CEO of Stark Industries: her death might be a secret for that reason, but it couldn't be maintained indefinitely and still no reason for the group not to know.

#10. This theory seems super likely to be true, especially since Asgard has had access to several Infinity Stones over the years. (But I expect the gauntlet in Odin's vault is a second one, not Thanos' -- in fact it's more likely to be a prop joke.)

#9. I don't think using the Reality gem to recast the roles, as clever as that would be, is more likely than #10 or #12.

#8. "Giant missile", sigh. There is no reason to use a huge Chitauri/Skrull army to conceal a secret invasion which, by definition, would already be secret. I don't really think it was meant to be a distraction in context of the movie's own plot, just a conveniently large threat for the Avengers to fight against. In the context of the developing series, it could be retconned as a way of trying a raid on the Eye using the New York portal, with Loki's ego getting in the way (staging it in NY instead of London or somewhere away from Avenger defense).

#7. Not only unlikely from Carter's consistent characterization, but actively discouraged by Cap1's script and the two Agent Carter seasons. Stark himself clarifies (albeit a little indirectly) that the "fondue" was just a friendly date invitation.

#6. We're shown the "world tree" at the end of Thor1, and it is not a literal tree: it's the shape of the universe connecting the nine realms. This is shown by in-story art in Thor2, too. (Maybe also in Thor1, I forget.)

#5. Seems very likely, and various Cap movies have been playing with this rather more obviously than the vague hints in the article (which can be better explained in other ways). I seriously doubt they'd name Av4 after Cap's death though.

#4. None of the slain villains so far, perhaps excepting Ronan the Accuser (whom Thanos wouldn't want to bring back except to punish perhaps), and Ultron (who was ultimately created by Thanos according to a couple of plot hints in Av2) are really worth bringing back to hassle the Avengers. Bringing back Ultron would make sense. Crossbones would not. (The Skull wasn't ever dead, but still isn't likely to register as a useful tool for the Mad Titan regardless of Schmidt's own self-aggrandizement.)

#3. This is a hacky justification for over-convenient writing.

#2. I really want this to be true, not least because writers could use it to tie in nicely with a future Doctor Strange storyline and concurrently with the Darkhold storyline in this season's Shield show. I've heard rumors that with Iron Fist released, producers have finally decided to cross the TV and film plots directly but "eventually". No reason to do so before Infinity War is done.

#1. I don't know if they'll ever get around to doing it, but he's dressed as the Watcher in Thor3, reportedly. I haven't seen GotG2 yet (busy Saturday), but his cameo in 1 meant nothing: he was just chatting up Bereet (if I recall correctly) which Rocket snarked about.

[mirth]

Note that the linked article will try to take over your browser to run ads. I'm on an old Mac, so I'm not too worried, but anyone else had better have their protection running hard.

I didn't have any problems on FF for Win 7, but I run AdBlock Plus on most websites.

[JasonPratt]

On further consideration, I suspect the article's author was mis-remembering the original plan to have Stan Lee collected by the Collector, and doing the post-credit scene which eventually went to Howard the Duck. (In fact, Adam Warlock's cocoon was in a collection tube and was shown busted and empty, if I recall correctly, in the aftermath of the explosion. This does have a major relationship with the Thanos story.)

[JasonPratt]

Correction: while I fully expected the golden woman to be "Her" (or related to "Her" somehow), I'm now hearing that she creates Adam Warlock toward the end of the movie and that the "Warlock Cocoon" in the previous movie has been abandoned as a visual joke.

This isn't much of a spoiler because most people will be like "wth even is Warlock, is that like a space sorcerer?" (Answer: the space version of Sorcerer Supreme is in the film evidently, but not him no.)