Doom85
Member
That's not what he said tho.
Using a character in a way to give the main character angst or some form of trauma BECAUSE something horrible happened to a loved one ... That's what he's talking about.
Exactly.
Especially in long-running series like the comics or these movie franchises, these deaths simply remove potential stories that could have been told with the character who was killed off, and just adds temporary angst for the existing characters affected who likely have already dealt with similar angst already.
Peter Quill had already dealt with losing Yondu. Thor had already dealt with losing his parents. Removing Gamora from Peter and Loki from Thor just removed story potential with those characters together so the survivors could cry about it which we’ve already seen. Thor being emotionally broken 5 years later when Rocket and Bruce find him in Endgame could have worked purely to Thor failing to stop Thanos from completing his objective. Loki did not have to die to accomplish that.
Now, yes, later entries did manage to make something of this with the Gamora variant in Guardians 3, and the Loki in, well, Loki. But the Gamora variant in Guardians 3 was written by James Gunn, not the Infinity War writers. And as for the Loki show, he never has any more interaction with Thor. So I’m not really giving credit to Infinity War for the former, and the latter went a different direction with that Loki (and the original Loki did not need to be dead for the alternate Loki to exist).
Natasha and especially Tony actually felt like a reasonable conclusion to their personal stories. They didn’t die purely for the other characters to cry over. THAT’S why their deaths work for me. I will give Loki that he does try to do the right thing at the end by attempting to stab Thanos, but it’s done so quickly and at the start of the movie that it’s hard to feel like this was a satisfying end to that character. It comes off as far more focused on, “let’s make Thor even sadder” and “let’s make Thanos threatening, even though we just had him wipe the floor with Hulk and Thor!” and less focused on a good send off for such a long running character like Loki.