Good, Evil, and Cosmic Loopholes: How Vormir Could Have Gone

[scrubjayspeaks]

So here's one of the things that bothers me about Natasha's death. It's not entirely about her specifically, though, so apologies for that in advance. My issue is that the quest for the Soul Stone could have been a great moment for The Creativity of Goodness*.

Look, Thanos's plan is just bad. First, all suffering is caused by conflict over limited resources. Okay, sure, I guess. Never mind that a much hotter take would be to address the fact that there is plenty to go around, but a small number of people hoard as many resources as they can, thereby depriving others. But cool, fine, we'll roll with it. Thanos snaps half of everybody.

(Also, how are we defining everybody? Sentient beings? Are animals included? Only some of them? Plants? Where does Groot fall on this spectrum? I'm unclear on any of this. Did he snap half of all dolphins, finally catching those sly bastards when the Vogons couldn't? ...I digress.)

At this point, my question is: so fucking what? Fine, cool, the people left have theoretically greater access to resources. Does Thanos think all species are going to...stop reproducing? Does he think no societies will once again face overpopulation**? The snap is a one-time thing--Thanos never intends to repeat the process. Is this why he's mad about the resistance? His plan will only work if everyone goes, oh, cool, cool, we get it, we'll carefully manage our population growth from here on out. Fuck, dude, tell me you weren't that naive.

Goddamn it, I got distracted. Point is, Thanos--not a role model for creative thinking.

So to get the soul stone, you have to sacrifice what you love.

Red Skull: Soul holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say, it is a certain wisdom.
Thanos: Tell me what it needs.
Red Skull: To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a sacrifice. [...] In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul.

So Thanos sacrifices Gamora: pretty dead lady laid out all bloody at the bottom of the cliff***.

Now, here's the thing. Anything with that kind of rule--to get X, you must Y--is a great opportunity to play with cosmic legal loopholes. Anything centered on emotion is even more ripe for subversion in this way. It's not just a rule; it's a riddle.

I saw a suggestion that Steve could have sacrificed the serum, and all it meant to his identity, and have that count. I'm not saying I agree with that particular idea--they would probably have needed to nix the specific use of "soul for a soul" back in Infinity War to make it work, for one--but that's the sort of thinking I'm after. Twist the rules, find the loophole, get creative.

Don't tell me the only way to overcome this obstacle is to do exactly the same thing the villain did.

Which brings me to my actual point at last. Because Evil is, at its heart, unimaginative. Uncreative. Stupid. And the forces of Good should be able to do a sight better than that, for god's sake.

I'm not saying all villains, fictional or real, are incapable of some creativity. Don't tell me about whatever serial killer found such elegantly weird ways of torturing people, or what petty monster used the system to his own advantage. That's, ugh, a certain sort of cleverness, but it's the most base kind possible. It's tedious even when it shocks. It's the kind of imagination that says shredding a canvas into a trashcan is just as creative as actually painting something on it****.

But I have a reason for saying this, beyond just instinctive snarling. Good obeys rules--even just self-imposed ones--all the time. Good says, this is right and this is wrong, and my behavior will be shaped according to those principles. The hero takes a stand--about what they will protect, how they will do it, what lines they will not cross no matter what is at stake--and figures out how to win without coloring outside those lines. Good knows how to work with rules and boundaries and restrictions, because it does it all the time.

Evil--not antagonists, not opponents, not people you dislike--real, proper Evil can't be bothered with such restrictions. It has never built up the discipline of the soul required to operate within boundaries, and it has never had to solve problems within such strictures. It's lazy, and it's careless.

The sort of Evil that would wipe out half of everyone at random, because it couldn't figure out how else to make sure everyone got enough bread to eat, looks at a problem like the Soul Stone requirements and thinks, sure, okay, guess I better do what it says.

I wanted to see the Avengers look at that same problem and think, hm, just how far can I stretch the edges of this rule and still qualify? I'm not saying no sacrifice would be needed. I'm not saying it wouldn't come with any pain. But there has to be a better answer, a more clever and creative answer.

Oh, oh, now I remember what this reminds me of: Kobayashi Maru. "I don't believe in no-win scenarios." That's exactly what I'm talking about. I wanted to see THAT on the cliff at Vormir. (Please don't @ me about Star Trek, it's not my fandom, forgive me for invoking it, etc, etc, whatever.)

And here's the thing: Natasha would have been goddamn perfection for that. The rogue-gone-good, the spy, the shapeshifter, the patron saint of those seeking redemption--who BETTER to outwit a rule like that?

I'm not saying they could have done it with the way the rules were established for Endgame.

But they wrote it that way, and they could have written it differently.

Fine, let Gamora die for Thanos's dumbass plan. (Or, I mean, don't, 'cause I don't want Gamora dead either.) Present him with the rules of the stone, and let him go along with them just the same. But they could have tweaked those rules just slightly, when they first laid them out. Change them such that Natasha, with Clint as her partner, would look at that kind of constraint and go:

I can get out of this. I can sacrifice something without losing everything, because I have lost everything before, I have sacrificed everything before, and I have rebuilt myself from ashes and broken bones, and I'm claiming my consolation prize retroactively.

It would be like a heist of the soul and of the Soul Stone.

Tell me that wouldn't have been better than what they gave us. Tell me that wouldn't have let her have a Big Damn Hero moment and live to brag about it to Steve. Tell me that wouldn't have spat in the eye of Thanos and his tiny, naive, short-sighted, tedious Evil. Tell me that, and I'll call you a dirty liar.

* This is my more diplomatic name for what I mean. I was going to just call it The Fundamental Stupidity of Evil, but I thought that might be excessively grouchy of me.

**It's a myth, on this planet at least, but whatever, go off, Purple Dude.

***Which is another ax I have to grind about Natasha's death. I think laying her out just like Gamora, a person with more than a few character beats in common with Natasha, in the same place, under the same circumstances, is not so much ~~~echoing~~~ or otherwise calling back Gamora's death. It's just...an exact copy of a scene that only happened one movie/five years ago.

(Compare that to the pairing of Bucky falling from the train and Steve falling from the helicarrier, which I think does a hell of a lot more because it's not just a carbon copy.)

Doing it exactly the same doesn't add any new meaning to the moment. Another pretty dead lady laid out all bloody at the bottom of the cliff. You haven't said anything DEEP here. It's cheap storytelling and dull cinematography, and y'all can fight me.

****No, nope, this is Not That Post. I do NOT invite you to fight me on this one. Just leave me to my grumblings.

Comments

[jeeps]

This is beautiful and absolutely right, thank you. I can't tell you how disappointed I was, especially in relation to it costing Natasha's life, that they did not find a way to subvert the rules of the soul stone in order to, idk, access the soul realm (which was certainly hinted at in IW with baby Gamora — and therefore, clearly, the continued existence of her soul) and use that as a way to save the day. I so fully expected them to do something creative with what they established that I couldn't even accept Natasha's death until the movie was over and she was still dead. Even if they didn't purposefully tweak the rules to make them subvertible later on, they still did establish enough to make not doing anything with it inexcusable. And there's really nothing else to be said about the Good vs. Evil of it all, you just laid it all out.

[scrubjayspeaks]

>>This is beautiful and absolutely right, thank you.<<

Thank you kindly! Glad it resonated with you.

>>access the soul realm (which was certainly hinted at in IW with baby Gamora — and therefore, clearly, the continued existence of her soul)<<

So, I pulled up the scene of Gamora's death, partly to confirm the exact wording that Red Skull gives and partly to make sure I really was correct in thinking Natasha's death mirrored her pose exactly. Aaaand that was absolutely all I could be bothered to rewatch of IW. I didn't even remember about baby Gamora and further implications about the soul realm. I might have to rewatch that at some point as well, but damn it, life is too short for all that sad.

>>And there's really nothing else to be said about the Good vs. Evil of it all, you just laid it all out.<<
I will admit that I am unfashionably straightforward about these things. I have a very low tolerance for shades of grey thinking. I wasn't sure how that aspect of this piece would go over.

[yasaman]

Here via tumblr! What I thought would happen during that scene, and what I think would have been narratively resonant and a creative way around the Soul Stone was that Natasha and Clint would, accidentally or on purpose, both jump at basically the same time, their (willing) sacrifice for each other and the Stone would cancel each other out, and the Soul Stone would be like "you've solved my sacrifice riddle!!!" Because it never made sense to me that an unwilling sacrifice would work for this. Like, yeah, sure, lose what you love, but I feel like if what you love is not down with you chucking them off a cliff, your sacrifice isn't worthy of the Stone. I also thought Infinity War set up something potentially interesting and plot relevant by having so many of our heroes willingly, deliberately sacrifice themselves for the Stones: Dr. Strange, Vision, Gamora's initial willingness to die so Peter could get the Reality Stone, Loki, etc. Having Natasha and Clint subvert that, having them find a loophole or show that in loving, willing sacrifice there's a path to transcendent victory, would have been far more satisfying than what we got. Of course, I suspect this would have been too sentimental and not edgy enough for most of the higher ups involved with the movie.

[scrubjayspeaks]

>>Here via tumblr!<<

Whooo! Thanks for making the jump over here. I knew I would lose a lot of people by doing it that way, but tumblr's nonsense has made me cranky.

>>Natasha and Clint would, accidentally or on purpose, both jump at basically the same time, their (willing) sacrifice for each other and the Stone would cancel each other out, and the Soul Stone would be like "you've solved my sacrifice riddle!!!"<<

Aaaaaaah, you have precisely articulated what I thought while in the theater! I was sitting there, SO EXCITED, because I absolutely thought they were going there. Neither one will be willing to sacrifice the other, they'll both fall together in the struggle, and they'll get, idk, joint custody of the dang stone. I was legit on the edge of my seat, so eager to see this obviously right and proper solution to the dilemma set forth.

I was unthrilled with the reality. To say the least.

>>Because it never made sense to me that an unwilling sacrifice would work for this. Like, yeah, sure, lose what you love, but I feel like if what you love is not down with you chucking them off a cliff, your sacrifice isn't worthy of the Stone.<<

Exactly! It seemed so perverse for the Stone to really mean for Thanos's solution to be the only/correct one. You're supposed to understand the terrible power of the stone, presumably to prove your worth in wielding it, and you do that by...killing what you love? WTF?

Next, Spider-Man's tag line will be updated to "with great power comes great opportunity to punt a fool off a roof."

>>Of course, I suspect this would have been too sentimental and not edgy enough for most of the higher ups involved with the movie.<<

Because nothing is more uncool than people--who have worked together for years, through unimaginable hardship, and bonded like family--caring for each other and having that combination of hard work and love rewarded in logical ways. /sarcasm

[yasaman]

When I saw so many people angry about Gamora after Infinity War, I got it, but wasn't there yet because I thought, you know, the story's not finished yet, let's see if this isn't what it seems. I thought there'd be some elaboration or pay off or twist in how Gamora wasn't the right kind of sacrifice, that the way it went down would give her soul power over the Soul Stone rather than Thanos. Because, seriously, that wasn't a sacrifice Thanos made. It was just murder. alas, looks like I was being far too hopeful! I mean, I'm still more than willing to fanwank to my heart's content: maybe Gamora and Natasha are actually masters of the Soul Stone in there and have a way out precisely because Gamora wasn't a willing sacrifice, and because Natasha sacrificed herself for Clint to get the Stone. How much more interesting would that be, to see these two women who were made into weapons against their own will turn that around to triumphantly clear their "red ledgers"? Instead we got both of them dead at the bottom of a cliff for the sake of men's pain. Ugh.

Ultimately, I think that while I very much applaud the achievement of Infinity War and Endgame, and while I was entertained while watching them and found plenty to like or even love in the movies, I think Infinity War and Endgame are lacking a certain moral clarity. It's not like I think the MCU is incapable of moral clarity: I thought CATWS had it, and Black Panther and Captain Marvel did too. The lack of it in Infinity War and Endgame really renders the movies hollow to me.

Natasha was, I think, one of the few characters who had moral clarity in these two movies, what with how she didn't stop working to find a way to fix the Snap, and she just ended up getting unceremoniously chucked off a cliff, and was barely mourned to boot.

Steve, famously the moral center of the MCU, ends up making what, if you go with the timeloop theory, is a morally abhorrent choice to escape to the past, abandoning his friends in the present and returning to a past he cannot change to, presumably, lie to the woman he loves about all the shit that he knows is going wrong with her life's work. (Or if you go with the AU theory, he's making the morally abhorrent choice to abandon his friends in the present, get with the woman he loves and fix what he can, while leaving the AU version of himself trapped in the ice to wake up in the future with nothing.)

Endgame made a bunch of choices that have a very thin veneer of emotional resolution, but which are rotten and empty once you break past that veneer. Natasha's death was when I really realized Endgame was gonna be a soap bubble of a movie experience for me, kind of fun and pretty to experience, but empty and ultimately unsatisfying.

Ugh, sorry for going on about it, I'm just still disappointed. It could've been great! So many way more interesting and emotionally satisfying resolutions! Well, that's what fic is for I guess, and at least Endgame leaves us with plenty of fodder for that.

[the_grey_hunt]

thank you! honestly, I'm STILL so mad that sacrificing Gamora even *worked* for Thanos to gain the stone. He never loved her, he never loved any of his "children". They were, to the end, pieces in his plot - as shown by how immediately willing he was to sacrifice her despite those crocodile tears.