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I was going to call you out for glossing over the Guardians of the Galaxy series, where Starlord and Gamora have a truly interesting romantic dynamic across the first couple movies, which is SO emphasized that it is the entire reason the heroes 'lose' the Infinity War.
But then I remembered they turned it into a joke for the third film.
So this might just prove the point.
Although James Gunn's NEXT film, this time with a more well known hero looks like it will lean heavily on the Lois Lane romance.
I wanted to mention it as an example for the femme fatale / bumbling idiot pairing example, but I felt it would have taken too long to explain properly, although clearly you demonstrated the opposite.
Starlord is also portrayed as the bumbling idiot of the group, like he gets replaced by Thor as the leader when he just... shows up.
Regarding "losing" the Infinity War,I don't know if that's the case, since Strange foresaw just 1 winning scenario which might as well have necessitated Starlord inadvertently freeing Thanos.
Yeah, hence the scare quotes.
That scene gets maligned for a few reasons. I don't think Quill acting out of character is a good critique, though. This is the same guy, who, in the second film, impulsively started blasting his own father into smithereens because he found out that dad was the cause of his beloved mother's death.
Forgetting the stakes and wailing on Thanos over his lost lover is fully in character.
I think the reason the scene is so maligned, is because it seems contrived to have the heroes lose from a basically unloseable situation, just so they could have thr sequel.
Like,whatever happened to Gamora can be found out or resolved by literally waiting for another <minute since finishing the task gives you literal control over reality. Sure, you can't bring people back sacrificed for the soul stone, but the characters don't know that yet.
Oh yeah.
They had to contrive a VERY particular situation where the heroes are on the cusp of winning and somehow, without some crazy deus ex machina, lose and Thanos achieves his objective.
Hell, they showed that Dr. Strange's portals can be used to sever people's arms earlier in the same film, that should have been the thing they tried first.
So they used Quill as a device for Thanos breaking the hypnosis and reclaiming the gauntlet. While it was in-character for Quill, it required a lot of contrivance to get it to happen.
HOWEVER, I do like that one common theme in the film is that the heroes lose b/c they don't have the "will" to make the hard sacrifices, whereas Thanos puts it all on the line to achieve his goal, and so he does.
There are MULTIPLE scenarios where the heroes could have won if they weren't committed to avoiding any real sacrifice.
Big one: they tried to save Vision's life when removing the stone instead of killing him so they could destroy it faster. Vision himself was okay with dying!
Or earlier, Loki gives up the space stone rather than letting Thanos kill Thor.
The heroes, despite the stakes, couldn't bear to accept losses.
Tbh Dr. Strange's powers are a walking deus ex machina, they could have sent thanos to the mirror dimension or to that no time hell hole if they wanted too. Hell, they showed us Dr. Strange could use time travel to be in the same place multiple times, him being a level 99+ wizard of wizarding he could have had like a 100 of him right there and nuked Thanos out of existence with magic bullshit too.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be ironic since he pretty much did all that.
Not the fake clone dudes, I meant literally using the time stone to have actual multiples of himself there
When did they show that Strange could do that? All I recall is him reversing time for specific objects, making clones sounds like it would be something that makes things worse even if he could do it, such as by creating Homestuck-esque "doomed timelines".
If he returns to the past with the time stone it just means quickload, not Ctrl X Ctrl V.
Later on, when they timetravel with Pym Particles it's explicit that they travel to alternate past, not their own.
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