AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, directors. Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, script, based on Marvel Comics characters by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al. (see IMDb for details). Charles Wood, Production Design. USA: Marvel Studios (production) / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (US and most of Earth distribution), 2018.

Significant here for frequent decaying or destroyed Industrial landscapes and at least four memorable images (minor caution: The fourth can be a "spoiler" for issues of plot).. * The highly robotized female cyborg Nebula from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY being tortured by being suspended face down and pulled apart — by a kind of science-fictionalized magic — showing momentarily but in clinical detail the articulation of her mechanical parts; as she is racked, we hear on the soundtrack her cries of pain, cut off by force of her will. The potentially-paradoxical effect is to stress the robotic aspects of Nebula while getting non-pathological members of the audience to empathize with her suffering. Students of the psychology, ethics, and implicit politics of empathy should study this scene carefully.

* The killable god Thor in a monumental "forge" device subjected to the full force of a sun to create a new and improved hammer. We have the image of a potentially-dying god within a machine, illuminated and suffering to recover his powers so he can rejoin the effort to save the worlds from massive-scale massacres.

* An adolescent Spider-Man in Tony-Stark-style Iron-Man Spidey-suit, complete in some shots with all eight legs of a proper spider. This gives the image of the empowering superimposition of the mechanical and cybernetic upon the human, enabling (not insectoid but) arachnid powers.

* We’re reminded that Vision is actually a robot when a crucial Infinity Stone is pulled from his forehead, wires still hanging from it.

Also note: The brief scene where Iron Man and Spider-Man must coordinate their actions to operate a craft intended for a much larger alien pilot rather than a human, for an instance of the performance of a «mechanical» task aiding two human beings in their developing relationship. Iron Man's new and improved nanosuit, which can repair itself until Tony Stark is wounded, suggesting an intimate, interconnected relationship between the suit and Stark. The reminder of the non-Super-Hero possibilities of technology in the robotic leg braces the recently-crippled James Rhodes uses to walk when he is not suited up as War Machine.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 2, 4, 5May18. Vision-as-Robot reminder from MW, web-master; correction on Nebula by Clayton B, who added also the observations on Iron Man Spider-Man, and James Rhodes/War Machine.