Avengers: Infinity War - How to Kill Your Characters

So I saw Avengers: Infinity War a week ago, and just had a few quick thoughts. In short, it's awesome, but I find it's harder to learn good lessons from good movies. Generally, you just learn how to do what that movie (or book) already did. Still, there are a couple things that Infinity War helped me put into words, so here we go.

Now, I'm hoping most people will have seen the movie by the time this goes live, but just in case...

Y'all have been warned

Killing characters seems to be the latest writing trend. After Game of Thrones, it seems to be understood that, if you don't kill off at least one character in your story, you're doing something wrong. This has also led to a general belief that if you want to raise the stakes or take your story in a more serious direction, killing off your characters is the best way to do it.

Now, for full disclosure, I kill off a fair number of my characters too. It's one of the first things I work out, you know: what's the beginning, what's the ending, who are the characters, and how many of them die, that sort of thing. So, you'd probably think that I'm a fan of this trend.

Not really, actually. It started out pretty well, with more and more writers taking a few pages from the Joss Whedon book of murder (still not over Wash, by the way), but recently I feel like writers have been going a bit overboard.

See, I think that killing characters is sort like the nuclear option. Sure, it's shocking. Sure, there are situations when it's necessary. And, when you do use it, it makes for a cool story, but only if you do it right, and put a lot of thought into why you're doing it. Because, let's face it, a character death that results from the writers seemingly pulling a name out of a hat, it feels really, really cheap and unsatisfying. It might be shocking in the short term, but long term, it doesn't sit right.

I used to think that the best way around this was to have each character death be some sort of noble sacrifice, but that didn't quite fit either. Some character deaths stick with us and have meaning, even if it's just a random murder. The death of Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is heartbreaking, but doesn't feel cheap, because, even if he didn't sacrifice himself, his death still means something. And without his death, the plot couldn't move forward at all.

Avengers: Infinity War very much subscribes to this methodology when it comes to killing characters. None of them are the result of a sacrifice that leads to the villain's downfall. All of them, however, are the result of Thanos having them outsmarted, and outgunned. And all of them are the conclusion of a character's arc, and serve to drive the plot forward.

By having the movie open with Thanos brutally murdering Heimdall and Loki (with Loki arguably being one of the most popular characters in the MCU), Infinity War establishes the stakes. No one is safe anymore. The characters even point out that Loki won't be coming back multiple times. But each of them gets something to do, some point where they can make a choice and take a stand. Heimdall has been largely ignored, but he draws attention to himself by using the last of his power to open the Bifrost and sent Bruce Banner to safety. And Thanos kills him for it. Loki can talk his way out of just about anything, and while Thanos clearly doesn't trust him, it seems as though Loki could talk his way out of this one as well. All he needs to do is stand by and give Thanos the Tesseract. Instead, he takes a stand, making a desperate play to assassinate the Mad Titan. And Thanos kills him for it. For both Heimdall and Loki, their deaths had meaning, and the plot was planned around that. Heimdall has always done what he perceived to be his duty, and in that moment his duty was to help Banner escape and warn the Avengers of what was coming for them. That sense of duty leads to his death. Loki has always been a trickster, but Thor has always maintained that there was a better man inside him. He proved it in Thor: Ragnarok and he proved it again here. His last act of defiance, his willingness to endanger himself to protect his brother, is the conclusion of his character arc. Without Heimdall, the Avengers wouldn't know what was coming for them until it was too late. Without Loki's sacrifice, Thor might never truly know whether that better man was just a part of his imagination. Both of these deaths not only drive the plot, but also serve as Thor's motivation to take down Thanos once and for all.

Later in the movie, we get our third character death, when Thanos is told that the Soul Stone can only be obtained by someone willing to sacrifice what is most important to him. Gamora's expression is one of vindication. The universe, she thinks, has finally played its last trick on Thanos. His plans have fallen into ruin, because she knows he can't care about anything. But she never expected how much he cared about her, in his own twisted way. Without Gamora, Thanos would never obtain the Soul Stone. But more importantly, this is a conclusion to Gamora's arc as well. We've been told constantly how Gamora is the favored daughter of Thanos, how he treated her much better than Nebula, how he hoped that she would sit in his throne one day. Her death serves not only to define their relationship once and for all, but also to define Thanos, and to show us that the Mad Titan is not just some conqueror or tyrant. He legitimately believes he is the hero of his own story. He really believes he is saving the world. But the world cannot be saved without sacrifice. And this is what Thanos must sacrifice. In a way, this is the part of the movie where Thanos proves that he is actually the protagonist of Infinity War, even if he is the villain. More than any other character, he willingly gives up what is most important to him in order to save the world.

But Gamora's death is also the result of her own choices. She rashly attempts to kill Thanos on Knowhere in spite of Star-Lord's objections, which leads to her capture. When Thanos is torturing Nebula, she willingly gives up the location of the Soul Stone in an attempt to stop him. When he tries to tell her how much he cares about her, she refuses to listen. When he tells her to take him to the stone, she goes. When Thanos is told what he must sacrifice, she spends time lording his failure over him, rather than making any attempt to escape, because she refused to see what the audience knew all along. That what Thanos held most dear to him, was her.

At first, Vision's death looks to be the sacrifice play we had been waiting for the whole movie. Until Thanos uses the Time Stone to undo his sacrifice entirely, and takes the Mind Stone by force, killing Vision a second time. Vision attempted to sacrifice himself for humanity, and though that sacrifice ultimately failed, it was not without meaning. Because Vision's death, like the others, is the conclusion of his arc. In that moment, he embraced what a hero needed to do, and he did what he needed to do to protect the woman he loved. Vision, an AI given a vibranium-laced body, capable of phasing through any danger or blasting anything dangerous with the Mind Stone from a distance, has never truly had to face the idea of death before. But he willingly accepts it here, in an attempt to foil Thanos once and for all and protect what's dear to him. Though his sacrifice failed to stop Thanos's master plan, his death was still a noble one.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on writing and on character deaths in particular. Let me know if you have any thoughts about this one!